DID YOU KNOW?

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Americans throw away billions of pounds of food every year because they falsely believe “sell-by” and “best-before” dates on package labels indicate food safety, researchers have found. A study by Harvard Law School and the Natural Resources Defense Council found that dates printed on packaged foods, which help retailers cycle through stocked products and allow manufacturers to indicate when a product is at its peak freshness, are inconsistent. They confuse consumers, leading many to throw out food before it actually goes bad. The authors recommended that “sell-by” dates be invisible to consumers so they cannot be misinterpreted as safety labels.

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